


Fishing

by Ankaret



Category: Stargate SG-1, The Wizard Of Oz (1939)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-07
Updated: 2010-06-07
Packaged: 2017-10-09 23:36:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/92810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ankaret/pseuds/Ankaret
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam carries on the tradition of inviting team members to go fishing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fishing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aella Irene](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Aella+Irene).



"So," said Cameron Mitchell, slinging a folding seat out of the back of his truck, and then returning with more care for the beer cooler. "Fishing."

"Yeah." Sam looked embarrassed. "Jack was always trying to get us to go fishing when he thought we had something on our minds, and... well... I suppose I just carried on with the habit."

"You see much of the General these days?"

"Not as much as either of us would like. What with Young and his unit going missing, and so on..."

Cam looked down at the folding seat rather than at Sam. He was a serving military officer; so was Everett Young; and it would have been unprofessional to give his opinion of the man anywhere that Young couldn't take a swing at him back. The seat was a khaki tangle of canvas wrapped about a non-Euclidean mess of poles. Cam gave it several quick, practised flicks of the wrist and a solid kick in the undercarriage, and it turned into something that he might have a prayer of sitting on.

Cam stretched his arms behind him to unclench his shoulders, which seemed to have got stuck on permanent alert, and went back to the truck. He returned carrying a bundle of canvas with something that looked like an oversized paintbrush handle. "My grandfather's split-cane rod," he said, unwrapping it reverently.

"Consider me the exactly right degree of impressed," said Sam.

"You'll be much less impressed when I fail to catch anything with it." Cam hesitated, then tried a tease. "My grandfather's rule was, men fished, girls did the cleaning and cooking."

"Jack's rule was, everyone fished, and if anyone ever caught anything except a mosquito bite we all drove up the road to the Catfish Shack to celebrate."

There was a contemplative silence. The river rolled by below them, slow as green-brown glass, the ropy currents out in the stream making a rhythm like a pulse under skin. Cam cast, on occasion, his line flying out between water and air in a lovely arc that reminded him of training weightless. Sam's lure bobbed. The fish did not bite.

"So," said Cam, figuring he'd best get it over with. "You wouldn't have asked me to come fishing if you didn't want to talk to me about something. And I can't help noticing, ma'am, that we've spent the best part of two hours not talking."

Sam finished her beer and gave him one of her best blue-eyed laser looks out under the swing of her blonde fringe. "It's your papers, Colonel."

Cam's heart started to beat... not faster, just more noticeably, like the current out in the river growing stronger. "Yes, Colonel?" he said, with his best look of farm-boy innocence.

"They're very good," said Sam patiently. "The best forgeries I've ever seen. I wouldn't be surprised if they were the best forgeries _Vala's_ ever seen, though I haven't shared my concerns with her, or the rest of the team. Except for Daniel, who discovered the discrepancy in the first place."

"Thank you for that," he said ruefully. His heart was hammering double-time now. The funny thing was, that she'd brought him _here_ to tell him this, where the landscape reminded him of home. Green, all green; green lowering trees, green-brown river, green grass smothered with mud at the river's pebbled bank. It was home, done out in agate instead of emerald.

"You took your name from a well-known Canadian Broadway actor," said Sam, gentle as an inquisitor. "Which is quite appropriate, all things considered. Daniel's still trying to work out how the original cultural transfer vector managed to reach your home world in the absence of a Stargate. The last I heard, he had half of SG-9 locked up in a Faraday cage belting out show tunes."

"My aunt always said it was a modification of the natural teleportation ability in flying monkeys."

"I'll be sure and let Daniel know," said Sam with a raise of both blonde eyebrows.

"So, what happens now?" Cam laid the split-cane rod carefully down and held out his hands in the approved waiting-for-the-cuffs fashion. "Is it all over? Drummed out of the service, dishonourable discharge, surrender, Dorothy?"

Sam looked tired. "We can probably manage better than that. I won't say it isn't the worst possible time, mind you, what with the _Destiny_ and the IOA. I swear, the only reasonable one on the IOA was Camille Wray, and she's two galaxies away by now and accelerating. There's going to be a lot of harrumphing about security clearances. But Jack'll be on your side." Her face looked tired and inelastic, and then bounced back into a rather more vehement version of its usual can-do expression. "At least, I'm sure Jack will be on your side. And the SGA took Teal'c on and made him a full member of the team, and Jonas. And _Vala_, for heaven's sake. They're not going to turn up their noses at you. Not once we've argued them down."

"Even when I reveal I'm an eighth part Munchkin on my mother's side?" said Cam in a deadpan voice.

Sam shook her head at him, but the smile came back, a little. "They might not let you stay on as leader, though. I'm just telling you."

"I've been in the Air Force long enough to work that one out, Colonel," he said, more sharply than he meant. "I didn't just fall off the Yellow Brick Road yesterday."

"I'm sorry," she said, for all the world as if he hadn't come in and pushed her out of her rightful place as O'Neill's heir first.

"You'll do a great job," he said, as if anyone had any doubt of it. "It'll just be a joint leadership with your name on the paperwork, not mine, that's all. You can have _all_ my administrative meetings with General Landry," he added hopefully.

"Yeah," said Sam, slapping at a mosquito that had landed on her wrist. "I mean, who else can you see doing it? Daniel? Vala? Teal'c could do it, but..."

"There's not a tin man's chance in the Land of Rust that they'll let him," said Cam.

"No."

There was another long pause, as if the whole agate-coloured earth around him exhaled a breath. Cam put away the split-cane rod, carefully, the way his grandfather had taught him, with intent to clean it properly later. Sam was still looking out at an island of lost brambles, being tugged and rolled along in the stream.

"You want to go to the Catfish Shack?" Cam said after a moment. "Hoist a few, watch the game. Maybe there'll be dancing."

"That's an offer I can't refuse. There's nothing biting here but the flies." Sam started reeling in her line. "You OK, Cam?"

He was. He wasn't sure _she_ was, but now wasn't the time to push. That was the thing about being part of a team; you looked after each other, and you knew when to ask and when just to be there, a sure solid presence at your buddy's back, whatever the brass said or did.

"Yeah," he said, making ready to tote the beer cooler back to the truck. "You know, it's a relief."

"What is?"

He grinned back at her over his shoulder. "Having other people know I'm not from Kansas any more."

**Author's Note:**

> There was wank about whether Cameron Mitchell was from Kansas. This came out of it. Written for Aella Irene.


End file.
